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Feist Publications, nc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co, - Wikipedia, the fee encyclopedta
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service
Co.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone
Service Co., 499 US. 340 (1991) “isa
decision by the Supreme Court of the United
States establishing that information alone
without a minimum of original creativity
cannot be protected by copyright. In the case
appealed, Feist had copied information from
Rural’s telephone listings to include in its own,
after Rural had refused to license the
information, Rural sued for copyright
infringement. The Court ruled that information
contained in Rural's phone directory was not
copyrightable and that therefore no
infringement existed
Contents
1 Background
2 Ruling of the Court
3 Implications
= 3.1 Other countries
4 Relation with treaties
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
Background
Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. is a
telephone cooperative providing services for
areas in northwest Kansas, with headquarters
in the small town of Lenora, in Norton
County. The company was under a statutory
obligation to compile a phone directory of all
their customers free of charge as a condition of
their monopoly franchise
Full case
name
Citations
Prior
history
Feist v, Rural
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 9, 1991
Decided March 27, 1991
Feist Publications, Incorporated v. Rural
Telephone Service Company, Incorporated
499 US. 340
(https://supreme justia. com/us/499/340/case. html)
(more)
ILLS. Ct, 1282; 113 L. Ed, 2d 358; 1991 US.
LEXIS 1856; 59 U.S.L.W. 4251; 18
U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1275; Copy. L. Rep. (CCH)
26,702; 68 Rad. Reg. 2d (P & F) 1513; 18
Media L. Rep. 1889; 121 P.U.R4th 1; 91 Cal
Daily Op. Service 2217; 91 Daily Journal DAR,
3580
Summary judgment for plaintiff, 663 F. Supp.
214 (D. Kan, 1987); affirmed, 916 F.2d 718
(0th Cir. 1990); affirmed, full opinion at 1990
U.S. App. LEXIS 25881 (10th Cir. 1990); cert.
granted, 498 U.S. 808 (1990)
Holding
‘The white pages of a telephone book did not satisfy the
minimum originality required by the Constitution to be eligible
for copyright protection, and effort and expenditure of
resources are not protected by copyright. Tenth Circuit Court of
psi wikipedia.orgivikF lst Ptiiatons_ Ine. v_Rural_Telephore_ Service Co.
Appeals reversed
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
Byron White - Thurgood Marshall
Harry Blackmun - John P. Stev
Sandra Day O'Connor = Antonin Scalia
waranos Feist Pbicaors, he, v Rural Telephane Serie Co - Wikipeda, he Fes eneyclopeda
Feist Publications, Inc. specialized in Anthony Kennedy - David Souter
compiling telephone directories from larger Case opinions
geographic areas than Rural from other areas
of Kansas, They had licensed the directory of
11 other local directories, with Rural being the
only hold-out in the region. Despite Rural's
denial of a license to Feist, Feist copied some Laws applied
4000 entries from Rural’s directory, Because US. Const. art. 1
Rural had placed a small number of phony
entries to detect copying, Feist was caught.
Majority O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, White, Marshall,
Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter
Concurrence Blackmun
Prior to this case, the substance of copyright in United States law followed the sweat of the brow doctrine,
which gave copyright to anyone who invested significant amount of time and energy into their work. At
trial and appeal level the courts followed this doctrine, siding with Rural.
Ruling of the Court
The ruling of the Court was written by Justice O'Connor. It examined the purpose of copyright and
explained the standard of copyrightability as based on originality
The case centered on two well-established principles in United States copyright law: That facts are not
copyrightable, but that compilations of facts can be.
"There is an undeniable tension between these two propositions," O'Connor wrote in her decision. "Many
compilations consist of nothing but raw data -- i.e. wholly factual information not accompanied by any
original expression. On what basis may one claim a copyright upon such work? Common sense tells us that
100 uncopyrightable facts do not magically change their status when gathered together in one place. ... The
key to resolving the tension lies in understanding why facts are not copyrightable: The sine qua non of
copyright is originality."
Rural claimed a collection copyright in its directory. The court clarified that the intent of copyright law was
not, as claimed by Rural and some lower courts, to reward the efforts of persons collecting information —
the so-called "sweat of the brow” or "industrious collection" doctrine — but rather "to promote the Progress
of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8). That is, to encourage creative expression.
The standard for creativity is extremely low. It need not be novel, rather it only needs to possess a "spark"
or "minimal degree" of creativity to be protected by copyright.
In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor stated that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of
collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the
information is presented, ete, but not on the information itself. If Feist were to take the directory and
rearrange it, it would destroy the copyright owned in the data. "Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a
subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a
competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement,"
O'Connor wrote.
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The court ruled that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its
service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. The fact
that Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and
Rural’s copyright claim was dismissed.
Implications
See also: Idea-expression divide and Threshold of originality
The ruling has major implications for any project that serves as a collection of knowledge. Information (that
is, facts, discoveries, ete.), from any source, is fair game, but cannot contain any of the "expressive" content
added by the source author. That includes not only the author's own comments, but also his choice of which
facts to cover, his choice of which links to make among the bits of information, his order of presentation
(unless it is something obvious like an alphabetical list), any evaluations he may have made about the
quality of various pieces of information, or anything else that might be considered "original creative work"
of the author rather than mere facts.
For example, a recipe is a process, and not copyrightable, but the words used to describe it are; see idea-
expression divide and Publications International vy Meredith Corp. (1996).] Therefore, you can rewrite a
recipe in your own words and publish it without infringing copyrights. But, if'you rewrote every recipe
from a particular cookbook, you might still be found to have infringed the author's copyright in the choice
of recipes and their "coordination" and "presentation", even if you used different words, however, the West
decisions below suggest that this is unlikely unless there is some significant creativity carried over from the
original presentation. It should be noted that a sufficiently novel, useful, and unique (i.e. non-obvious)
recipe can be granted protection under patent law.31
Feist proved most important in the area of copyright of legal case law publications. Although one might
assume that the text of U.S. case law is in public domain, Thomson West had claimed a copyright as to the
first page citations and internal pin-point page citations of its versions of court opinions (case law) found in
its printed versions of the case law ("West's citation claims.") West also had claimed a copyright in the text
of its versions of the case law, which included parallel citations and typographical corrections ("West's text
claims.") The text claim would have barred anyone from copying the text of a case from a West case law
reporter, since the copied text would include West enhancements to which West claimed copyright.
Ina pre-Feist case, West's citation copyright claim had been affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit in a preliminary injunction case in 1986 brought by West against Mead Data, owner of
Lexis. West v. Mead (1986);(4] however, in a case commenced in 1994 in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found Feist to have
undermined the reasoning in West v. Mead, West's citation claims were challenged in 1994 by legal
publisher, Matthew Bender & Company and by a small CD-Rom publisher HyperLaw, Inc. HyperLaw
intervened, joining Matthew Bender in the citation challenge and separately challenging West's text
copyright claims, West was found by the Second Circuit in 1998 not to have a protectable copyright interest
in its citations; neither to the first page citations nor to its internal pagination citations. See Matthew Bender
y, West, Citation Appeal.!*] The Second Circuit thereby rejected the 1996 determination of a Minnesota
district court in Oasis Publishing Co. v. West Publishing Co., 924 F.Supp. 918 (D. Minn, 1996), that the
outcome of West is not changed by Feist
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In the same case, but in separate decisions in which Matthew Bender was not involved, HyperLaw
successfully challenged West's text claims. Judge John S. Martin ruled in favor of HyperLaw against West
ina US. District Court decision in May, 1996. Matthew Bender v. West, No. 94 Civ. 0589, 1997 WL
266972 (S.D.N.Y. May 19, 1997), aff, 158 F, 3d 674 (2nd Cir. 1998), cert. denied sub. nom. West v.
Hyperlaw, 526 U.S. 1154 (1999).!61 West lost to HyperLaw in its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Second Circuit and certiorari was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.!71
After the 1986 West v. Mead decision, Mead Data and Lexis were acquired by Reed Elsevier, a large
English-Dutch based publisher. During the Matthew Bender v, West case, Reed Elsevier and Matthew
Bender entered into a strategic relationship, culminating in Reed Elsevier's acquisition of Matthew Bender
in 1998, just after the Second Circuit appeals were argued. Reed Elsevier now was on the side of West and
filed an amicus brief opposing HyperLaw and supporting West. Thus, although the name of the case might
suggest that Matthew Bender challenged West on the text claim, by the middle of the case Matthew Bender
‘was on the side of West on the text issue. Reed Elsevier's support of West's claims to a copyright in text
‘was consistent with the initiatives, discussed below, to sidestep Feist by implementing database protection,
through legislation and treaties discussed below. Similarly, during the case, West was acquired by the
Canadian based international publisher, the Thomson Corporation.
Another case covering this area is Assessment Technologies v. Wiredata (2003),!8] in which the Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a copyright holder in a compilation of public domain data cannot use
that copyright to prevent others from using the underlying public domain data, but may only restriet the
specific format of the compilation, if that format is itself sufficiently creative. Assessment Technologies also
held that it is a fair use of a copyrighted work to reverse engineer that work in order to gain access to
uncopyrightable facts, Assessment Technologies also ereated new law, stating that it is a copyright misuse
and an abuse of process if one attempts to use a contract or license agreement based on one's copyright to
protect uncopyrightable facts
In the late 1990s, Congress attempted to pass laws which would protect collections of data,!*! but these
measures failed {!°] By contrast, the European Union has a sui generis (specific to that type of work)
intellectual property protection for collections of data.
Other countries
See also: Sui generis database rights
The applicability of copyright to phone directories has come up in several other countries
In Canada, the appeal-level case of Tele-Direct (Publications) Inc. v. American Business Information Inc.
(1997) 76 C.P.R. (3d) 296 (F.C.A.) reached a similar result to that of Feist, However, the Supreme Court
partially backed away from the originality doctrine in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada.
Under the CCH ruling, someone may assert protection in a database where the facts are themselves not
copied from another source. For example, a person may assert protection in a collection of her own recipes,
but she may not assert protection in a database of facts about persons and their ancestry compiled from
census records,
In Australia, the Federal Court decision of Telstra v. Desktop Marketing Systems [2002] FCAFC 112
followed the UK approach in Walter y, Lane and ruled that copyright law did, in fact, follow the "sweat of
the brow" doctrine, However, Desktop v, Telstra held, as did CCH Canadian, that collections of facts must
Iepen kip orgWKUF eat Pullers. v_Rual Telephone, ServiceCo, arananors Feist Publications, nc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co, - Wikipedia, the fee encyclopedta
not be copied from other sources to be eligible for protection. In 2010, the Telstra decision was overturned
in a ruling by Justice Gordon by Telstra v. Phone Directories'" using the precedent of IceTV v, Nine
Network
Relation with treaties
Congress has been considering whether to implement a treaty negotiated at the World Trade Organization,
Part of the Uruguay Round Agreement resulted in text which states, in Part II, Section I, Article 10.
Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by
reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be
protected as such, Such protection, which shall not extend to the data or material itself, shall be
without prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or material itself
The text mirrors that of Article 2(5) of the Berne Convention, which applies to "collections of literary or
artistic works"
This treaty provision is broadly in line with the United States Copyright Act and the Act's case law, which
protects compilations of data whose "selection and arrangement" is sufficiently original. See 17
US.C. § 101 (http://www. law.comell.edu/uscode/17/101 html) ("compilation" as defined by the United
States Copyright Act includes compilations of data). The standard for such originality is fairly low; for
example, business listings have been found to meet this standard when deciding which companies should be
listed and categorizing those companies required some kind of expert judgment. See Key Publ'ns, Inc. v.
Chinatown Today Pub. Enters., 945 F.2d 509 (2d Cir. 1991) (applying Feist). As such, implementation of
this treaty would not overrule Feist.
See also
= List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 499
List of United States Supreme Court case:
Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Rehnquist Court
Idea-expression divide
Threshold of originality
Database right
References
1. "The Feist v. Rural Decision’ (http://caselaw Ip.findlaw.com/scripts/getease pl?court=US &vol=4998invol=340).
2. Publications International v Meredith Corp., 88 F.3d 473 (7th Cir., 1996)
3. "The Law of Recipes: Are Recipes Patentable?" (Feb 10, 2012) IPWatchdog
(http://www. ipwatchdog com/2012/02/10/the-law-of-recipes-are-recipes-patentable/id=22223/)
4. West Publishing Co, v. Mead Data Central, 799 F.2d 1219
(http://showease netins.net/webytrhalvorson/law/799_f2d_1219.html) (United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit|8th Cir], 1986)
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5. Second Circuit - Citation Appeal: Matthew Bender v. West, 158 F.3d 693 (2d Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S.
1154 (1999) (http://www. hyperlaw.com/westlit/litdocs/1998-1 1-03-second-circuit-opinion-citation-HLvWest-97-
74301.html)
6. District Court - HyperLaw Text Decision: Matthew Bender v. West, No. 94 Civ. 0589, 1997 WL 266972
(SDNY. May 19, 1997), aff'd, 158 F. 3d 674 (2nd Cir. 1998), cert. denied sub. nom. West v. Hyperlaw, 526
ULS. 1154 (1999). (http://www hyperlaw. com/westlit/litdocs/1997-05-19-176-Martin-Order-Text html)
7. Second Circuit - HyperLaw Text Appeal Decision: Matthew Bender v. West, 158 F. 34 674 (2nd Cir. 1998),
aff'g, No. 94 Civ. 0589, 1997 WL 266972 (S.D.N.Y. May 19, 1997), cert. denied sub. nom. West v. Hyperlaw,
526 U.S. 1154 (1999) (http://www: hyperlaw.com/westlit/litdocs/1998-11-03-second-circuit-opinion-ctation-
HLyWest-97-74301.html)
8. Assessment Technologies v. Wiredata, 350 F 3rd 640
(http://www. law pitt edu/madison/copyright/supplement/assessment_v_wiredata pdf) (7th Cir., 2003)
9. H.R, 2652, Collections of Information Antipiracy Act
(http://www techlawjournal. com/congress/h2652data/Default.htm) 1998,
10. Armageddon on the Potomac: the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act
(http://www. dlib.org/dlib/january99/0 Iband. html) 1999
IL. Telstra v. Phone Directories (http://www_austlii.edu av/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/44. html)
Further reading
= Ekstrand, Victoria S. (2002). "Drawing Swords After Feist: Efforts to Legislate the Database Pirate"
Communication Law and Policy 7 (3): 317-341. doi: 10.1207/$15326926CLP0703_04
(https://dx.doi.org/10.1207%2FS 15326926CLPO703_04).
= Ginsburg, Jane C. (1992). "No ‘Sweat"? Copyright and Other Protection of Works of Information after
Feist v. Rural Telephone". Columbia Law Review (Columbia Law Review, Vol. 92, No. 2) 92 (2):
338-388. doi: 10.2307/1 123087 (https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F 1123087). JSTOR 1123087
(https://www jstor.org/stable/| 123087).
= Thorner, Benjamin B. (1997). "Copyright Protection For Computer Databases: The Threat of Feist
and a Proposed Solution” (http://www. vjolt.net/vol I/issue/vol|_artS.pdf) (PDF). Virginia Journal of
Law and Technology 1 (5): 1522-1687
External links
= Text of the decision
(http://caselaw Ip.findlaw.com/scripts/getease.pl?
court-US&vol=499&invol=340) from FindLaw.com
Wikisource has original
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Feist Publications, Ine.,
y. Rural Telephone
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» Co.&oldid=656154388"
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